1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a download system, download control method, and storage medium for portable players, which are suitable for downloading music data to portable players including storage media.
2. Prior Art
A portable player is generally used, which has a flash EEP-ROM inside as a storage medium, which has a storage capacity of about 32 or 64 Mbytes to store music data. By regenerating the stored music data, a user listens to corresponding music via headphones or the like. Such a portable player is generally called an “MP3 portable player” because the compressed storage method based on the MPEG Audio Layer 3 is used to store music data in the flash EEP-ROM.
Then, downloading carried out by a portable player according to the prior art will be described with reference to FIG. 4.
Reference numeral 1 denotes an MP3 portable player acting as a portable player and which has a flash EEP-ROM (Electrically Erasable Programmable Read Only Memory) 2 inside as a storage medium.
Reference numeral 3 denotes a table on which the portable player 1 is placed and which has an accommodating recess 3A formed therein for accommodating the portable player 1. The accommodating recess 3A has a terminal, not shown, for outputting music data to the portable player 1. In addition, the table 3 has connected thereto an interface 12 (hereafter referred to as “the I/F 12”) of a personal computer 4, described later. After the portable player 1 has been placed on the table 3, the personal computer 4 is operated to download music data stored in an HDD 9 of the personal computer 4, to the flash EEP-ROM 2 of the portable player 1.
The personal computer 4 has a CPU 5 for controlling the entire personal computer, a ROM 7 that stores a control program and data which are used by the CPU 5 to control components which are connected to the CPU 5 via a bus 6, and a RAM 8 for storing various data and results of arithmetic operations. In addition, the personal computer 4 has a hard disc drive 9 (hereafter referred to as “HDD 9”) that stores music data, a panel interface 10 (hereafter referred to as “the panel I/F 10”) composed, for example, of a keyboard for inputting a command signal to the CPU 5, an MPEG encoder 11 that operates when music data stored in the HDD 9 are downloaded to the flash EEP-ROM 2 of the portable player 1, to encode the music data into MPEG codes, the I/F 12 for connecting the personal computer 4 to the table 3, and an interface 14 (hereafter referred to as “the I/F 14”) for connecting the personal computer 4 to a CD player 13.
Next, an operation will be described, which is performed when a user stores music data in the flash EEP-ROM 2 of the portable player 1.
First, when the user uses the personal computer 4 to store his favorite music data in the HDD 9 from a compact disc (CD) or the like, the stored music data is encoded by the MPEG encoder 11, and the encoded data is downloaded to the flash EEP-ROM 2 of the portable player 1 via the table 3. Thus, by carrying only the portable player 1, the user can listen to his favorite music anywhere.
With the above portable player 1 according to the prior art, the user must store music data in the HDD 9 of his personal computer 4 from a CD. Disadvantageously, this operation requires a large amount of time and is cumbersome.
In addition, according to the prior art, to download music data to the portable player 1, the user must prepare a required CD or the like for each downloading operation. Disadvantageously, for CDs that are not easily available, music data cannot be easily downloaded to the portable player.